Re: Serbian - contemporary of Sanskrit

On Feb 10, 6:11 pm, "Dušan Vukotić" <dusan.vuko...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 10, 1:48 pm, fire.serpe...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:



On Feb 10, 11:06 am, "Du¹an Vukotiæ" <dusan.vuko...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Feb 10, 10:59 am, fire.serpe...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

The close similarity between Serbian and Sanskrit is not at all
surprising. Slavic tongues are some of the oldest and least changed
Indo-European languages. But that does not indicate that Serbian is
anywhere near the original Indo-European tongue. Also, please remember
that Sanskrit is NOT the mother of Indo-European languages. It is an
older sister of Greek, Latin, Slavic, Celtic and Germanic.

Absolutely wrong! Sanskrit is IE language thanks to the massive IE
loanwords; i.e. the native population of India acquired a great
portion of its vocabulary from their European conquerors.

Who told you that Sanskrit is IE only because of loanwords?

The Sanskrit vocabulary is not logically arranged according to the
meaning of words. The Sanskrit words cannot be traced back to its
original source (basis, root) without the help of European languages
(Slavic, Germanic, Romance and Greek). The similar internal lexical
confusion is visible in Albanian (probably in Armenian) and in all
other eventual languages where the number of loanwords surpassed the
number of native words.

It is
generally recognised that Sanskrit is derived from an Aryan tongue of
invaders into India. Yes, the native population of India all acquired
vocabulary from these invaders. But you must not forget that the Aryan
invaders also acquired vocabulary from the conquered peoples of India.

Possible, but the percentage of those words is negligible.

Sanskrit contains so much IE that it would be safer to say that it is
an IE tongue that contains elements of Indian tongues in it, and not
the other way round.

Yes, I agree. Sanskrit is an IE language thanks to massive IE
loanwords.

The oldest tongues of the world also contain the greatest number of
ROOTS. Surprisingly, Sanskrit itself only possesses around 400 roots,
which is very poor compared to a Middle-Eastern language like Arabic
that contains over 100 000 (one hundred thousand) root words. This
points to the extreme antiquity of Semitic tongues compared to the
much more recent and impoverished ones of the Indo-European family.

Quatsch!
Nonsense!

It is not very scholarly of you to just dismiss an assertion by simply
saying NONSENSE. That is surely a very poor academic approach. You
should study the subject of roots in ancient and modern languages
before you dismiss it in such a summary fashion. One should be humble
enough to learn before making up one's mind. A simple dismissal will
not change the truth or the facts, my dear.
I thought this was going to become an intellectually interesting
forum, but I will not find it so if it is overrun by people who are
not ready to embrace anything that goes against their own received
ideas. What a shame.

Do not be so sensitive, comrade! :-)
If you looked above you would see that you wrote "100.000 root-words".
Sorry, but no one could have defined it otherwise than a pure
nonsense.

DV

I can understand your disbelief, but you must remember that even
modern Arabic today uses around 10 000 roots - one author who wrote
recently on this and who is quoted by scholars all around the world is
Darwish.

The fact is that modern Arabic has lost a large corpus of words that
existed in ancient Arabic, which, as a semitic language, is based on
several types of roots: the basic triconsonental roots (made up of
three consonants), of which permutations of the 28-letter alphabet
offered a conservative minimum of 20 000 basic root words (28x28x28) -
one will find, in ancient Arabic, almost all the possible permutations
of any three letters of the alphabet, e.g. of B-R-K B-K-R R-B-K R-K-
B K-B-R K-R-B, etc.

Then, using each one of these basic root words, literally thousands of
further roots can be constructed containing suffixes, prefixes and
infixes, e.g. I-S-T-B-R-K I-S-T-B-K-R I-S-T-R-K-B .... I-N-B-R-K
I-N-B-K-R I-N-R-B-K, etc., from which whole sets of new nouns,
adjectives, verbs and adverbs are derived - in addition to the tens of
thousands of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs derived directly
from the triconsonental roots.

Following your logic every word is a root word

It is thus a rather small estimate to state that the total number of
root words in ancient Arabic is 100 000.

How many words the ancient Arabic had? Read again what you have
written: [...Then, using each one of these basic root words, literally
thousands of
further roots can be constructed...]
Please, multiply your "each root" of "existed" 20.000 "basic roots" by
your "thousands of further roots" and what are you getting...?
20.000.000 of "roots" and "subroots"?

DV

This process yields literally hundreds of thousands of words, many of
which cannot be used, obviously, by any single individual in his/her
lifetime. Therefore, it is not surprising that many have become
obsolete over time. But because the fixed procedure by which one forms
complex words from root words in Arabic is well-understood, anyone who
knows the meaning of any root word can deduce the meaning of any noun,
adjective, verb or adverb from it, a bit like an English-speaker who
has never seen the word GIVER, can deduce that ER means 'the one who
does the action' so it must mean 'the one who gives'. The difference
in Arabic (and in any ancient semitic language) is that this is the
case for every single word of the language. Once the meaning of the
root word is known, any further root or any complex word derived from
it can be deduced by an Arabic-speaker.

This is why I have to admit that compared to ancient semitic
languages, IE languages are rather poor. And that is an understatement.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

No, I apologize if I couldn't explain myself clearly enough. I'm
afraid you do have to have first-hand knowledge of the structure of
semitic tongues to fully understand their root-system.

There are simple roots made up of three letters. Then there are other
simple roots of four and five letters. Then you have further roots
with added suffixes, prefixes and infixes. These further, more complex
roots, behave similarly to the simple three-lettered ones in the sense
that one may derive nouns, verbs, etc. from them just as you can
derive them from the simple triconsonental roots.

I did not mean to say that every word in Arabic is a root. Please
don't lose your patience with me here! What I was trying to underline
was that all the words of Arabic are based on roots which are either
simple or complex. And that the simple three-consonent roots are
around 20 000. Then you have thousands more of simple four-letter and
fice-letter roots. Then you have the complex roots that are derived
from the simple ones. And all these roots are the basis of separate
nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. So a conservative estimate would be 100
000 roots, but in reality it is possibly even higher.

So yes, one can construct millions of words from such a large number
of roots because of the way Arabic functions. But to grasp that, one
has to study the language carefully, because semitic languages do not
behave like IE languages - so the rules of root derivation are
different.

If every simple word in English behaved like Arabic, then let me, just
for the purpose of illustration, propose the following example.

Let us say that to any word you may add the suffixe ER - which like I
said, means 'the one who does something'. As you know, one can already
add it to some words to make a new word: e.g. RAT -> RATTER (a rat-
catcher) LIGHT -> LIGHTER (a thing that lights)

If English were like Arabic, then you could transform ANY simple word
like that. Thus, the possibilities are almost endless in Arabic. Let's
take five simple words, WALL, CUP, SKY, FOOD, HOUSE. Add ER and you
get WALLER, CUPPER, SKYER, FOODER and HOUSER. These words do not
perhaps (yet!) exist in English but in Arabic they would all be valid,
according to the rules of the language. Every single simple or complex
root word could thus be made into another word.

So, if in English there is a corpus of, let us say, about 70 000 words
not containing the suffix ER, adding ER would create another 70 000.
This is how Arabic functions. But there is not only one way of
transforming root words in Arabic, obviously. So there are millions of
valid words that emerge from the process described above.

This is so mind-boggling compared to what happens in IE languages,
that it is no wonder that it might appear far-fetched. But, like I
said, nothing changes the facts.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Serbian - contemporary of Sanskrit
    ... Slavic tongues are some of the oldest and least changed ... that Sanskrit is NOT the mother of Indo-European languages. ... Surprisingly, Sanskrit itself only possesses around 400 roots, ... it can be deduced by an Arabic-speaker. ...
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    ... Slavic tongues are some of the oldest and least changed ... that Sanskrit is NOT the mother of Indo-European languages. ... Surprisingly, Sanskrit itself only possesses around 400 roots, ... it can be deduced by an Arabic-speaker. ...
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    ... Slavic tongues are some of the oldest and least changed ... that Sanskrit is NOT the mother of Indo-European languages. ... that contains over 100 000 root words. ... it can be deduced by an Arabic-speaker. ...
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